Francis Hutcheson (philosopher)
Francis Hutcheson was an Irish philosopher of Scottish descent, widely regarded as one of the key figures of the early Scottish Enlightenment. He served as Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow and was a major advocate of moral sense theory, which holds that humans possess an innate sense that guides moral judgments. Hutcheson is best known for his ethical writings, in which he defends benevolence as the primary source of moral virtue and anticipates later utilitarian theories with his formulation of "the greatest happiness for the greatest number".
Beyond ethics, Hutcheson made significant contributions to aesthetics, epistemology, logic, and metaphysics. He was among the first modern thinkers to explore beauty as a product of an internal sense, helping to establish aesthetics as a distinct branch of philosophy. In epistemology, he engaged critically with John Locke's empiricism while defending the role of innate dispositions. In logic and metaphysics, he proposed early versions of common-sense realism and contributed to the development of the Scottish school of common sense.
Hutcheson also developed an early argument for animal rights, contending that sentient creatures deserve moral consideration based on their capacity to experience pleasure and pain. His influence extended to later Enlightenment thinkers such as David Hume, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, and Thomas Reid, and his writings were widely read in both Britain and colonial America.
Biography
Early life
Hutcheson is thought to have been born at Drumalig in the parish of Saintfield, County Down, in modern-day Northern Ireland. He was the "son of a Presbyterian minister of Ulster-Scottish stock, who was born in Ireland" but whose roots were in Ayrshire in Scotland. Hutcheson was educated at Killyleagh, and went on to Scotland to study at the University of Glasgow, where he spent 1710 to 1718 in the study of philosophy, classics and general literature, and afterwards in the study of theology, receiving his degree in 1712. While a student, he worked as tutor to the Earl of Kilmarnock.Return to Ireland
Facing suspicions about his "Irish" roots and his association with New Licht theologian John Simson, a ministry for him in Scotland was unlikely to be a success, so he returned to Ireland and received a licence to preach. When, however, he was about to enter upon the pastorate of a small dissenting congregation he changed his plans in order to pursue a career in academia. He was induced to start a private academy in Dublin, where, assisted by Thomas Drennan, he taught for 10 years.In Dublin his literary attainments gained him the friendship of many prominent inhabitants. Among these was The Rt. Hon. and Most Rev. Dr William King, the Church of Ireland Lord Archbishop of Dublin, who refused to prosecute Hutcheson in the Archbishop's Court for keeping a school without the episcopal licence. Hutcheson's relations with the clergy of the established church, especially with Archbishop King and with The Rt. Hon. and Most Rev. Dr Hugh Boulter, Lord Archbishop of Armagh, seem to have been cordial, and his biographer, speaking of "the inclination of his friends to serve him, the schemes proposed to him for obtaining promotion", etc., probably refers to some offers of preferment, on condition of his accepting episcopal ordination.
In 1725 Hutcheson married his cousin Mary, daughter of Francis Wilson of Longford. Her dowry included extensive property holdings including the townlands of Drumnacross, Garrinch, and Knockeagh, in County Longford. They had seven children of whom only one survived, also called Francis.
While living in Dublin, Hutcheson published anonymously the four essays for which he is best known: in 1725 Inquiry concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony and Design, and Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, which together comprise his Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue; and in 1728, the Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections and Illustrations upon the Moral Sense. The alterations and additions made in the second edition of these essays were published in a separate form in 1726. To the period of his Dublin residence are also to be referred the Thoughts on Laughter and the Observations on the Fable of the Bees, being in all six letters contributed to Hibernicus' Letters, a periodical that appeared in Dublin. At the end of the same period occurred the controversy in the London Journal with Gilbert Burnet on the "True Foundation of Virtue or Moral Goodness". All these letters were collected in one volume.
Chair of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow
In 1729, Hutcheson succeeded his old master, Gershom Carmichael, in the Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, being the first professor there to lecture in English instead of Latin. It is curious that up to this time all his essays and letters had been published anonymously, but their authorship appears to have been well known. In 1730, he entered on the duties of his office, delivering an inaugural lecture, De naturali hominum socialitate. He appreciated having leisure for his favourite studies; "non-levi igitur laetitia commovebar cum almam matrem Academiam me, suum olim alumnum, in libertatem asseruisse audiveram." Yet the works on which Hutcheson's reputation rests had already been published. During his time as a lecturer in Glasgow College he taught and influenced Adam Smith, the economist and philosopher. "he order of topics discussed in the economic portion of Hutcheson's System is repeated by Smith in his Glasgow Lectures and again in the Wealth of Nations."However, it was likely something other than Hutcheson's written work that had such a great influence on Smith. Hutcheson was well regarded as one of the most prominent lecturers at the University of Glasgow in his day and earned the approbation of students, colleagues, and even ordinary residents of Glasgow with the fervour and earnestness of his orations. His roots as a minister indeed shone through in his lectures, which endeavoured not merely to teach philosophy but also to make his students embody that philosophy in their lives. Unlike Smith, Hutcheson was not a system builder; rather, it was his magnetic personality and method of lecturing that so influenced his students and caused the greatest of those to reverentially refer to him as "the never to be forgotten Hutcheson", a title that Smith in all his correspondence used to describe only two people, his good friend David Hume and influential mentor, Hutcheson.
Death
Francis Hutcheson spent time in Dublin, and died while on a visit to that city in 1746. He is buried in the churchyard of Saint Mary's, which is also the final resting place of his cousin, the architect Sir William Bruce. Today Saint Mary's is a public park located in what is now Wolfe Tone Street. Many United Irishmen would have revered the memory of Francis Hutcheson. Some of the leaders of the Dublin United Irishmen are remembered in the street and place-names of the city. Most Dubliners can direct a visitor to Wolfe Tone Street, Oliver Bond Street, Russell Street, Lord Edward Street and Emmet Road. "Never to be forgotten Hutcheson" lies in what is now an unmarked grave in the Dublin he loved and "where his best work was done".Ethics
According to Hutcheson, man has a variety of senses, internal as well as external, reflex as well as direct, the general definition of a sense being "any determination of our minds to receive ideas independently on our will, and to have perceptions of pleasure and pain". He does not attempt to give an exhaustive enumeration of these "senses", but, in various parts of his works, he specifies, besides the five external senses commonly recognized :- consciousness, by which each man has a perception of himself and of all that is going on in his own mind
- the sense of beauty
- a public sense, or sensus communis, "a determination to be pleased with the happiness of others and to be uneasy at their misery"
- the moral sense, or "moral sense of beauty in actions and affections, by which we perceive virtue or vice, in ourselves or others"
- a sense of honour, or praise and blame, "which makes the approbation or gratitude of others the necessary occasion of pleasure, and their dislike, condemnation or resentment of injuries done by us the occasion of that uneasy sensation called shame"
- a sense of the ridiculous. It is plain, as the author confesses, that there may be "other perceptions, distinct from all these classes," and, in fact, there seems to be no limit to the number of "senses" in which a psychological division of this kind might result.
Passing over the appeal to final causes involved in this passage, as well as the assumption that the "moral sense" has had no growth or history, but was "implanted" in man exactly as found among the more civilized races, his use of the term "sense" tends to obscure the real nature of the process of moral judgement. For, as established by Hume, this act consists of two parts: an act of deliberation leading to an intellectual judgement; and a reflex feeling of satisfaction at actions we consider good, and of dissatisfaction at those we consider bad. By the intellectual part of this process, we refer the action or habit to a certain class; but no sooner is the intellectual process complete than there is excited in us a feeling similar to what myriads of actions and habits of the same class excited in us on former occasions.
Even if the latter part of this process is instantaneous, uniform and exempt from error, the former is not. All mankind may approve of that which is virtuous or makes for the general good, but they entertain the most widely divergent opinions and frequently arrive at directly opposite conclusions as to particular actions and habits. Hutcheson recognizes this obvious distinction in his analysis of the mental process preceding moral action, and does not ignore it, even when writing on the moral approbation or disapprobation that follows action. Nonetheless, Hutcheson, both by his phraseology and the language he uses to describe the process of moral approbation, has done much to favour that loose, popular view of morality which, ignoring the necessity of deliberation and reflection, encourages hasty resolves and unpremeditated judgements.
The term "moral sense", if invariably coupled with the term "moral judgement," would be open to little objection; but, taken alone, as designating the complex process of moral approbation, it is liable to lead not only to serious misapprehension but to grave practical errors. For, if each person's decisions are solely the result of an immediate intuition of the moral sense, why be at any pains to test, correct or review them? Or why educate a faculty whose decisions are infallible? And how do we account for differences in the moral decisions of different societies, and the observable changes in a person's own views? The expression has, in fact, the fault of most metaphorical terms: it leads to an exaggeration of the truth it is intended to suggest.
But though Hutcheson usually describes the moral faculty as acting instinctively and immediately, he does not, like Butler, conflate the moral faculty with the moral standard. The test or criterion of right action is with Hutcheson, as with Shaftesbury, its tendency to promote the general welfare of mankind. He thus anticipates the utilitarianism of Bentham, not only in principle, but even in the use of the phrase "the greatest happiness for the greatest number". Hutcheson does not seem to have seen an inconsistency between this external criterion with his fundamental ethical principle. Intuition has no possible connection with an empirical calculation of results, and Hutcheson in adopting such a criterion practically denies his fundamental assumption. Connected with Hutcheson's virtual adoption of the utilitarian standard is a kind of moral algebra, proposed for the purpose of "computing the morality of actions".
Hutcheson's other distinctive ethical doctrine is what has been called the "benevolent theory" of morals. Hobbes had maintained that all other actions, however disguised under apparent sympathy, have their roots in self-love. Hutcheson not only maintains that benevolence is the sole and direct source of many of our actions, but, by a not unnatural recoil from the repellent doctrine of Hobbes, that it is the only source of those actions of which, on reflection, we approve. Consistently with this position, actions that flow from self-love only are morally indifferent. But surely, by the common consent of civilized men, prudence, temperance, cleanliness, industry, self-respect and, in general, the "personal virtues", are regarded, and rightly regarded, as fitting objects of moral approbation.
This consideration could hardly escape any author, however wedded to his own system, and Hutcheson attempts to extricate himself from the difficulty by laying down the position that a man may justly regard himself as a part of the rational system, and may thus "be, in part, an object of his own benevolence", a curious abuse of terms, which really concedes the question at issue. Moreover, he acknowledges that, though self-love does not merit approbation, neither, except in its extreme forms, did it merit condemnation, indeed the satisfaction of the dictates of self-love is one of the very conditions of the preservation of society. To press home the inconsistencies involved in these various statement would be a superfluous task.
The vexed question of liberty and necessity appears to be carefully avoided in Hutcheson's professedly ethical works. But, in the Synopsis metaphysicae, he touches on it in three places, briefly stating both sides of the question, but evidently inclining to what he designates as the opinion of the Stoics, in opposition to what he designates as the opinion of the Peripatetics. This is substantially the same as the doctrine propounded by Hobbes and Locke, namely that our will is determined by motives in conjunction with our general character and habit of mind, and that the only true liberty is the liberty of acting as we will, not the liberty of willing as we will. Though, however, his leaning is clear, he carefully avoids dogmatising, and deprecates the angry controversies to which the speculation on this subject had given rise.
It is easy to trace the influence of Hutcheson's ethical theories on the systems of Hume and Adam Smith. The prominence given by these writers to the analysis of moral action and moral approbation with the attempt to discriminate the respective provinces of the reason and the emotions in these processes, is undoubtedly due to the influence of Hutcheson. To a study of the writings of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson we might, probably, in large measure, attribute the unequivocal adoption of the utilitarian standard by Hume, and, if this be the case, the name of Hutcheson connects itself, through Hume, with the names of Priestley, Paley and Bentham. Butler's Sermons appeared in 1726, the year after the publication of Hutcheson's two first essays, and there are parallels between the "conscience" of the one writer and the "moral sense" of the other.